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Les demoiselles de la nuit

Introduction

Whereas Le roi nu is a cheerful burlesque, Les demoiselles de la nuit (‘The ladies of the night’) – described as a ‘cat-ballet in one act’ – is an altogether moodier, though eventually quite as witty, affair. This work was written to a scenario by Jean Anouilh and choreographed by Roland Petit, who staged the first performance with his own company, Les Ballets de Paris de Roland Petit, with elaborate designs and costumes by the leading woman surrealist Leonor Fini, at the Théâtre Marigny on 21 May 1948. A leading member of the company was the young Margot Fonteyn, who danced the part of the white kitten, Agathe. She at first refused to wear a cat mask on the grounds that she would never do such a thing at Covent Garden. In retaliation, Fini threatened to set the theatre on fire, and Petit finally persuaded Fonteyn to wear the mask because, he claimed, Fini was capable of anything! In the event the ballet was a resounding success, and was subsequently staged in London and New York.

Here the action is set among a decadent society of cats, whose activities underground seem a mirror for the human life in the city above. The alpha male, called Baron de Grotius, intends to wed the frivolous and gorgeous white kitten, Agathe; but she falls in love with a human violinist who has lost himself in the cellars. Through the love of a human, she becomes human herself, and they flee the wedding celebrations and make their home above ground in a poor garret, where they have difficulty paying the rent. Agathe finds herself falling back into her feline nature – she kills a caged bird, and when the Baron traces her she leaves her sleeping lover and follows the other cats. The violinist tries to chase them over the rooftops but falls to his death; Agathe returns, finds his body and curls up beneath it ‘in animal devotion and human love’.

This is certainly a more varied ballet than Le roi nu, with episodes of romance and pathos, while the humorous numbers have a delicacy and stylishness appropriate to their feline subject (not to mention the frequent occurrences of ‘miaow’-type glissandi in the strings). The melancholic nocturne that opens the ballet, with its evocative horn solo, is one of the most memorable pages in Françaix’s output, and this music returns as an interlude two-thirds of the way through the score. Other highlights include the rapid, gossamer-light flute solo in ‘Parsuite de la souris’, so evocative of the breathless flight of the mouse hunted by the cats; the exquisitely soulful oboe solo that characterizes Agathe’s entrance; and the pomposity of the Baron, in whose music we may recognize several brief quotations from other composers, such as the Rakóczy March. The final Pas de deux, as the cat lovers prepare for their nocturnal nuptials, and the elegiac final bars, radiate a quality of tenderness that many human protagonists might envy.

Recordings

'The playing throughout is sensitive and fully attentive to the varied rhythms, while the sound is clear and bright, bringing out Françaix's imaginati ...'Thierry Fischer seems totally attuned to Françaix's idiom, and the engineers have captured the excellent acoustics of Belfast's Ulster Hallto colourf ...» More